


Rainbow Drops

by orphan_account



Category: Wicked - Maguire
Genre: Community: wicked_prompts, Fantasy, Friendship, Gen, Kid Fic, over 1000 words
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-03-05
Updated: 2009-03-05
Packaged: 2017-10-02 13:56:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At age 10, both Elphaba and Galinda suffer illnesses and fever that send them to a strange dreamworld full of alien ticktock things and new dangers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rainbow Drops

**Author's Note:**

> Could be read as either friendship fic of pre-slash Glinda/Elphaba, you decide. Originally written for a prompt on the Wicked-Prompts community on Livejournal.

When Elphaba was ten years old, a rope snapped on a rope-and-plank bridge linking two Quadling lake-houses. The bridge lurched and dropped from underneath her feet and she grasped at the handrail in terror. She held on, but her feet splashed into the water. The droplets splattered like flecks of burning coal on her calves and thighs, and her feet burned and bristled and itched.

Elphaba never cried, but she cried out, calling for Father, Nanny, Mother, in that order. Her father was only a few steps behind her and was already splashing in the waist-deep water, afraid to touch her lest he burn her further. At the house, a boat was already being lowered into the water.

The locals knew all about the strange girl and her even stranger weakness, the one so beloved of the Unnamed God despite her deformities. She was rescued, bundled into dry blankets and wiped as dry as she could be, but her skin was burned badly and seemed like to fester in the humid swamp air.

The family stayed in the village for a week longer than expected, waiting for her fever to break. Elphaba lay shivering in her cot under many blankets, her stick-like ankles and bony feet wrapped in bangages, her forehead burning hot.

During that time she had strange and terrible dreams that could only be interpreted by her worried family through the sleeping girl's mutters and whimpers, and the strange smiles and grimaces that passed her face as she went through her dreamworld encounters and conversations.

-

When Galinda was nine and three quarters of age, her parents took her to the Emerald City to - they hoped - see the Wizard. She didn't seem to remember much of the trip afterwards, and her parents and Ama never spoke to her about it, being much too sensible to spread tales of their own negligence as parents, or of the susceptibility of the Wizard's wares.

They had been granted the honour of dining with the Wizard along with dignitaries and nobles from all over Oz, a dinner serving tremendous numbers in honour of the anniversary of the Glorious Revolution. The Wizard himself appeared in the ridiculous festive guise of a balding little man, the shape which they said he'd had upon arriving to Oz, a far cry (some thought, though never said) from the imagined glory of Lurlina's arrival at the beginning of time. The din in the echoing great hall was unimaginable, the clink of cutlery alone enough to drown out normal conversation, so compliments and cordialities had to be shouted into the ear of one's neighbour.

The children, of course, were tended by their Amas and Nannies, left behind in hotel rooms and lodgings. That was where Galinda would have been, if their hotel had been prebooked, or the town less congested with out-of-town celebrants. As it was, she was in the Wizard's kitchen, having escaped her Ama in the palace waiting room and wandered off in search of sweets.

The kitchen was a huge, pumping, steaming, burning machine, with workers flitting around it with precision and speed, their faces red and sweaty, their arms full of pots and pans and dishes. Galinda crept on the sidelines and under tables, getting her knees into kitchen scum, frightened by the sounds and feet around her, but excited at the same time. The Wizard's table was the greatest in the world, and if an Arduenna had to resort to theft to be fed, at least she would only thieve from the best.

She slipped into the pantry after a gangly kitchen boy and slipped in between shelves as he picked out his ingredients and hurried out. The light went out with him, but a sliver was enough to illuminate the rows of goodies set on shelves near the door. Galinda felt and nibbled her way through a touch of everything that smelled sweet and fattening, feeling good, for once, for being wicked. There were muffins, sugar cubes, little packets of decorative pink marmelade flowers, sticky-sweet cream drinks.

Feeling thirsty, next, Galinda moved on, feeling her way through the bottles of drinks standing next to the wall. She passed by the ones she recognized as grown-up drinks, and finally set her hands on a bottle of bright green bubbly juice with a happy picture of a laughing man on the label. She couldn't read the text in the dark.

It was a different kitchen boy who found her stretched out on the cold floor, pale and almost breathless. He called for a cook, and little Galinda was carried out into the arms of a flurry of women.

Her parents stayed an extra week in the Emerald City, housed in the rooms of another Gillikin family in one of the finest hotels. Galinda lay pale and delirious in a cocoon of freshly laundered sheets, looking very tiny and human, mumbling incomprehensibly in her sleep.

-

Galinda stood in a chilly wind in the strange, stinking city, smelling of different gasses than the Emerald City, and missed her Ama dreadfully. She huddled in on herself, her fine dress little protection against the breeze. She begun to drag her feet miserably on the gravel, passing from one tall tree to tall tree, each planted carefully to border the walk. She could tell it was a park, with its fountains (grey and sludgy), trees and plants (shrivelling under the cold), and the people hurrying past her, looking either perplexed, busy, or pitying at the sight of her.

The last thing she remembered was putting the bottle on her lips, and then an explosion and a spiral of green vapour, and then solid gravel under her feet.

'Please, sir, madam, have you seen my Ama?' she asked them, but none answered. 'Go back to your mama,' they would say. Grown-ups could be so stupid sometimes - had she not say she was looking for her?

Until suddenly she heard, 'Good heavens, can you people not see that she's lost?'

Galinda turned to see a tall thin woman hurry towards her, with bony elbows but a kindly face, dressed in a severe brown gown of good new cotton. Besides her, another woman in brown alighted from a carriage, and she was scooped into arms and pressed into bosoms.

Wrapped up and hoisted into the carriage, she asked again for her Ama, but the women didn't even know what an "Ama" was. Galinda was almost ten, and hadn't cried before, but now she did, because there was no more escaping the facts. She was truly alone in a strange world.

-

Elphaba scrabbled through the garbage on a side alley, dodging the shadows she saw twitching, ignoring the stares she felt at her back. In her thin plain gown, already smudged with mud and filth, she was not much different from them, and in the dark her colour looked like little more than a trick of light. She found a piece of moldy bread, broke off a healthy piece and continued quickly before she could be envied and mugged for the small discovery.

Three days had passed since she'd dropped into an alleyway in another part of the city - three days during which she'd eaten little, and what she had eaten had hardly been worth it. Her feet ached intermittently, though they carried only the blisters of walking through the streets barefoot. Her boots had been stolen on the first day.

She was terrified of rain. She'd seen no sturdy shelter that wasn't barred by a gate or a wall. Her stomach ached with hunger, an ebb and flow of gurgling need, and her throat was parched for a drop of juice or weak wine.

She wrapped her rags closer around herself and pulled half a rotten blanket over her head, and stepped into the dim morning light of the cobbled street.

-

Galinda sat outside the candy store waiting for the Miss Davieses, clutching a bag of sticky sweets, her belly sick of all the sugar she'd eaten. She'd never believed her Ama when she'd said it would make her ill, and she was still sure Ama had lied about her face sticking into a grimace if the wind changed. She gripped the bag more tightly, then released the grip of her fingers, trying to concentrate on the crinkling sound, rather then the terrifying honks and howls of the ticktock things all around her.

A pair of feet showed up in her line of vision, a shade of green mirroring a brightly coloured candy in its see-through wrapping. Galinda looked up, startled, into the green - yes, green - face of a dirty thin street urchin. She felt like wiping her hands just looking at her. The girl's eyes were almond-shaped and brown, and serious.

The green girl held out a thin hand. Galinda had to remind herself there were people whose skin was dark brown and deep red, too - who was she to say what war normal in this world?

'Take it,' she said, shoving the candies into the girls' hands. 'I'm sick of sweets.'

The green girl took the bag and popped one brightly coloured drop into her mouth. Her face looked strange for a moment, then she eagerly dropped her hand in for another. 'The Unnamed God be with you,' the girl murmured, looking somewhat ashamed to say it, and turned to go.

Galinda nodded and was about to go in to look for the Davieses, when it struck her just what the girl had said. Miss Davieses never talked of the Unnamed God. They had a name for their God. The girl was already half-way down the street.

'Wait!' Galinda called after her, jumping off her little bench and racing after the girl, who just picked up her pace, cradling the bag of candy close to her chest and eating as she ran. 'Wait! Lurlina preserve you! Wait!'

At the sound of Lurlina's name, the girl slowed, then stopped, and turned around suspiciously. Galinda reached her and grasped her hand, sticky sugar lodged between their young skins.

-

'But she is lost too!' Galinda insisted, nearly stamping her foot at the Miss Davieses. 'She's my age, and hungry, and she hasn't an Ama either. She tells me she's a Thropp Descending!'

'My dear, that means nothing to me,' said Miss Jane Davies, giving her sister a worried glance. 'She probably has some dreadful disease. We can have her delivered to a good pauper's doctor…'

'She's not ill, she's just green,' Galinda insisted. 'You yourself said we should not judge a man's character by the colour of his skin.'

'She meant the Negroes, dear,' said Miss Alfrida Davies, not unkindly. 'This child is clearly not healthy. Please, come with me and I'll scrub you clean; Jane will call a man to deliver this poor child to a shelter.'

'It's all right,' said Elphaba, and went to stand by the door, her face a mask of fury. Galinda was led away, helpless, while Miss Jane edged around Elphaba to get to the door.

-

Later that night, there was a knock on Galinda's window, and when she crept over she nearly jumped for joy to see Elphaba's face peering over the edge. She unlatched the window and the Elphaba climbed in limb after stick-like limb like a big green spider, her hands red with rust from the drainpipe she'd climbed.

'The place they took me to was full of really sick and dirty people, and the doctor pinched and rubbed at me to see if the colour would come off. The moment he brought out a bucket of water I had to run, because they weren't the sort of people who listen to children.'

'Isn't that everybody?' asked Galinda with a little huff of frustration. A toothy grin spread on Elphaba's face.

Elphaba slept under Galinda's bed that night, having one pillow and one warm clean blanket for herself, so the Misses wouldn't find her by accident if she fell asleep in full sight of the door to the little guest room they'd set up for Galinda. The Misses lived in a small three-room apartment on the second floor of one of the nicer boarding houses in the City. They shared one bedroom by habit, and entertained in the third room. There was also a maid's closet, where their Edna stayed. Edna's skin was the exact brown of Elphaba's eyes.

The drawing room, as it was called, was girt with bookshelves and little round tables with crotcheted doilies and porcelain figures. The bookshelves held tracts and booklets that Galinda could not read, for the letters were all wrong, but Miss Alfrida had read some out to her. There were old tracts to liberate people with black skin, tracts to save a young woman's soul, and tracts to lead an errant man back to the right path. Everywhere there were embroidered cushions.

Galinda woke up early and after a brief whispered conversation with Elphaba sneaked into the drawing room, pulled the key out from under a tea cosy and opened the locker that held the Misses' health artifacts, medicines, and bottle of spirits. She picked out the sweet-smelling jar of oil and a bar of soap from the washing cabinet and sneaked back into her room. Elphaba wriggled out of her clothes and gratefully rubbed her body with the oil and soap while Galinda modestly turned away, and dried herself on a towel already provided in the little bedroom's linen cabinet. She then accepted Galinda's offer of the dress she'd worn on the day of her arrival in the City, though she eyed the pink bows and cloth roses suspiciously. Galinda dressed herself in the brown one given her by the Miss Davieses, somewhat regretfully, as brown really did go with green much better than pink did - but they couldn't risk the Misses asking what happened to the brown dress.

'They're bound to find out soon enough,' said Elphaba that afternoon, munching on pilfered muffins.

'They're awfully nice, of course,' said Galinda, 'but…'

'"Awfully nice" to send me to that so-called hospital,' said Elphaba drily.

'That wasn't nice at all, it's true,' said Galinda. 'But, even if they were, they're not my Ama and this is not my home, and neither is it yours. We need to get home.'

Elphaba nodded grimly. 'I'd like to see more of this place, though,' she said. 'It's a whole new world - and I expect it's no less rotten than the other one.'

This Galinda could not understand. There was no comparison between her family's lush lands in Gillikin and this arid construction of metal and stone. Being a young lady who had been taught not to disagree loudly, however, she merely cleared her throat and sipped some pilfered tea.

They exchanged tales of their arrival. Elphaba could remember nothing but the searing pain of water on her feet, which she thought must be a dream, as her feet were untouched. The only lead they had was the bottle Galinda had sampled in the Wizard's pantry.

'Can you remember anything of the label?' asked Elphaba.

'It had a laughing man. He reminded me a little of the official portrait of the Wizard, but more portly and less severe.'

'Maybe it was the Wizard's magic elixir. Look, I'm going to climb out tonight and see if I can find it in the shops. There's one just around the corner with the window filled with bottles with labels of laughing men on them. I saw it on the way here.'

'No, you can't!' Galinda almost cried out, before remembering to whisper. 'You're green, Elphie. I'll go. I can claim to be doing an errand for the Misses.'

Elphie scrutinized her for a moment before grinning at her again with evident delight. Galinda smiled back, feeling like she'd passed some test. She only noticed later, when she was gingerly climbing down the pipe clutching a few - likewise pilfered - bills of the Misses' money, that Elphie's canines were longer than was strictly usual and gleamed sharp as fangs.

-

Honest Mike Bauer had all kinds of clients, and he sold them all kinds of liquor. When the little girl handed him good American dollars across the counter, he ignored her guilty look, her age and the conservative dress she wore; he didn't look for bruises on her neck, or wonder if she was running an errand for a parent or a man standing at the corner threatening to run her through if she did not get him drunk. He handed over the bottle of absinthe and touched his hat at her on her way out.

-

When Edna opened the door to Galinda's bedroom the following morning, with the Misses behind her back murmuring about adoption over their morning tea, she found Galinda and Elphaba sprawled drunk and barely breathing on the bed, tangled in the sheets, with sick on the floor at the foot of the bed.

The doctor was called for Galinda, and the police for Elphaba.

-

Elphaba bounced a ball against the wall of the five square meter yard of the orphanage. The older boy who'd tried to take it from her was sniffing loudly in the corner, trying not to cry, or finger the big blue bruise developing on his wrist. She was in brown serge, and hadn't bathed for a week, because the orphanage could not waste oils on her.

The ball bounced against the wall, then the asphalt, and back into her hand. It was a good ball. This was good for thinking, too, though what she thought she might as well not have, for her mind was bristling with violence.

'Psst.'

Elphaba looked around. There was a white hand and wrist pushed through the rails of the fence separating the children from the street, waving. Behind it she saw a flicker of blonde curls. She dropped the ball and ran to Galinda.

'Are you all right?' they asked each other at the same time, then laughed.

'I make do,' said Elphie. 'How about you? They didn't throw you away, did they?'

'No,' said Galinda, feeling rotten. She could smell the dried sweat on Elphaba, but wouldn't pull away. 'No, I ran away while we were in the park. I'd heard them talking about where they'd sent you.'

'I've been waiting for you, actually,' said Elphie. 'There's one more thing we can try.'

'There isn't,' said Galinda miserably. 'All we had was the bottle, and this one looked exactly like the one I tried!'

'But I do remember one thing, too,' said Elphaba with a queer, quenched look in her face. She glanced at the corner. There was a rainwater bucket standing there.

Galinda's eyes widened. 'Elphie, no!'

'Galinda, yes,' said Elphie sternly, and backed away from the other girl. She turned to scoop a ladleful of water from the bucket and walked back to Galinda, holding the ladle like a deadly weapon - which, of course, it was. 'Take my hand,' she commanded.

'Please don't,' Galinda begged. 'You said it might kill you.'

'I don't even care,' hissed Elphaba. She took Galinda's hand, gritted her teeth and splashed her legs.

Galinda gripped her hot little hand and squeezed her eyes shut, but she couldn't block out the scream.

-

This time there was no separating the girls. The orphanage sent word for the Miss Davieses, but their kind coaxing could do no more than the slaps and slurs of the mistress of the orphanage. Galinda clung to Elphaba's arm while the girl was bandaged and anaesthesized with a drop of laudanum ('At least it's not her drink of choice,' muttered Miss Alfrida under her breath and then crossed herself), and when she was at least asleep, Galinda climbed onto the thin bed with her and hugged the other girl to herself.

'She might as well stay,' said the mistress eventually. 'Girls will form these attachments. I don't suppose you'd have room for two? We could certainly use the space.'

'Not after what she did,' said Miss Jane coldly. 'That girl should not be let anywhere near respectable children.'

So the Misses sailed out and Galinda stayed. In the morning, she dressed in the serge dress of the orphanage children, too short for her at the arms, without half a word of complaint.

-

If a girl of ten moved the washing cabinet in the girls' dormitory to the corner and stood on it on tiptoe, she could remove a plank from the ceiling and pull herself up onto the ceiling beams beyond. It was a world all of its own, the width of the house, with nothing but flimsy ceiling planks to catch you and at the very least betray you with a thump if you fell between the beams. Some of the stronger girls, who didn't need to worry about thieves, stashed their trinkets and treasures here. It was their shared secret.

Lights-out was an hour before sunset in the orphanage, and wake-up an hour before sunrise. Galinda and Elphaba made a habit of bundling their clothes under the blankets to make sleeping figures of themselves, and then climbing to the beams and through a small ceiling window to the roof itself, to watch the gasses of the city paint brilliant blazing sunsets across the sky.

One night, when they'd been in the orphanage for weeks, maybe months, and Elphaba's calves were criss-crossed with a patchwork of healed scars, they sat and watched the last sunset of the summer before fall set in. Galinda's hand lay limp and motionless in Elphaba's. They thought of nothing much, listening to the silence behind the noises of the city and the wind in their ears. The smell of rain was still in the air.

'Oh, look,' said Galinda, suddenly. 'A rainbow!' Elphaba squinted to see it - a ghostly bridge of colours against the purple-blue sky.

The wind picked up, slowly at first, then tearing at their hair and clothes. 'Let's go back down,' said Elphaba and stood up, but then a gust of wind slammed her against the chimney. Galinda screamed and fell against her, almost crushing the thin girl against the brick, and the wind just kept rising. Terrified, Galinda felt her feet leave the rooftop. She screamed Elphaba's name and reached for her hand, and felt Elphaba's iron fingers crush hers.

'Don't let go!'

The wind picked both of them up, and the world became a blur. The pain on Galinda's fingers was numbing. She tried to hold on, but finally, bruised and hurting, she uncurled her fingers, and Elphaba slipped away.

-

Two girls woke up at the same moment in two different countries in Oz, both after seven days of fever, both screaming the name of a saint.

-

Elphaba strode through the streets of the Emerald City, brimming with a mix of hatred and love, and regret. Glinda was already on her way back to Shiz, and already Elphaba had a plan for the evening, which involved possible death if the people she sought did not trust her, or she asked for them in the wrong place. But she was strong, and some things had to be done. One of the things Elphaba did not feel was fear.

Glinda's kiss still burned her skin, almost as if the moisture on her lips had been pure water. It would stay there for a long time, whispering to her of the things she'd left behind - friendship, affection, a normal life under a normal vocation - humanity, vulnerability, emotion. It was bearable. Reminders never did you any harm, or changed what was to what might have been.

What was worse was the nagging feeling that she was abandoning Glinda - abandoning her to the life she had always had and would always have. Which was worse? Leaving everything you had, or not leaving it?

The image of a storm passed her mind, and the scars on her legs tingled, almost as a memory of a dream, or an echo of what was still to come. There was sadness there, too, dashed with a bitter sense of loss. Or was it betrayal?

It was poppycock, she decided, romantic nostalgia. She gripped her shawl tighter around her and strode firmly on, into the moving, shouting, selling, buying crowd of the city, and disappeared.


End file.
